Hawaiian Airlines aims to eliminate its GDS booking surcharge: Travel Weekly

Hawaiian Airlines, now a brand within Alaska Air Group, plans to do away with its $7 segment surcharge for bookings through a GDS. 

“We are committed to making all content available without surcharges,” Hawaiian CEO Joe Sprague said at the Travel Weekly Hawaii Leadership Forum on April 15. “We are working with the GDSs on this, and we’ll have more to share soon. We’re also committed to working with our travel partners to make certain that we get this approach to technology right for everybody: the airline, our guests and our travel-planning partners.”

Sprague also detailed various integration initiatives that Alaska and Hawaiian are working through. He said he hopes the brands will be unified in a single passenger service system within a year. In addition, work continues on merging the Alaska Mileage Plan and HawaiianMiles loyalty programs. He said he expects Hawaiian to join Alaska in the Oneworld alliance in a year. 

Sprague talked about some of the network changes that merger is enabling, including more flights between North America and Hawaii. 

“We’ve been preparing for the last few months for what will be the busiest summer flying season for Hawaiian Airlines since before the pandemic,” he said.

Sprague noted that Hawaiian has new routes planned from Seattle to Tokyo Narita this summer and from Seattle to Seoul in the fall. 

“Beyond that, it’s an overall expansion of Hawaiian flying. We’re trying to harmonize the network and the schedules between Alaska flying and Hawaiian flying,” he said. Hawaii flights will shift mostly to Hawaiian Airlines, while Alaska Airlines reduces the number of flights to Hawaii. 

Updates on Hawaii airline capacity

Aside from Hawaiian, other airlines are adding Hawaii capacity. American is increasing Los Angeles-Honolulu flights to four times a day, said Phillip Dugaw, American’s senior manager of partner strategy and head of AA Vacations partnerships. Los Angeles-Maui flights will return to twice daily in the fall. 

“This winter, we are launching Dallas to Kona, and that will be on a Dreamliner aircraft. Then in October, we are launching Chicago-Honolulu, which will be our longest domestic route,” said Dugaw.

United’s capacity is also up year over year. “We’re up about 11%, which is pretty significant for us,” said Michael Scott, United’s senior manager of leisure sales. He said that United is bolstering its Denver and West Coast hubs to give Hawaii travelers options.

Delta’s Hawaii capacity is up 6% this year, said Katrin Koenig, chief commercial officer of Delta Vacations. Salt Lake City-Kona service will start in December.

“Salt Lake and feeder markets into Salt Lake are underserved markets to Kona, so that should be really helpful,” Koenig said. She added that Atlanta-Honolulu and Salt Lake City-Maui will get second daily flights for the peak winter season.

Kelly Knox, corporate responsibility advisor for Southwest Airlines, said that it sees strong demand in Hawaii, but the airline has been having supply chain challenges with Boeing. 

“Our capacity is down, but that is strictly because of our supply chain and our Boeing delivery schedule,” Knox said. “I want to be clear that we remain very committed to the Hawaii market, and when we have that additional aircraft availability, we see great opportunity to expand our capacity.”